In what ways did Social Darwinism differ from Darwin’s theories? What did they have in common? What were the origins of Social Darwinism, and why did it not emerge as the homogenous, monolithic ideological entity that it is often assumed to be?

The Social Darwinism is based on theories of evolution developed by a British naturalist

Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The idea is that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a fight

for existence in which natural selection results in “survival of the fittest”. In the first part, we’re going

to explain the Darwin’s theories; in the second, the sliding to the Social Darwinism and in the latest,

their differences and common points.

Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury (Great Britain). He studied

medicine in Edimbourg from 1825 to 1828. In 1831, he went on the Beagle’s ship in expedition to

South America and to the Pacific Islands. Darwin's job as ship naturalist was to collect specimens,

make observations, and keep careful records of anything he observed that he thought significant.

He brought from this trip, which lasted 5 years, the observations which will be the bases of his most

famous book : “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of

Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” issued in 1859. In 1837 Darwin began his first notebook on

evolution. For several years he filled his notebooks with facts that could be used to support the

theory of evolution. He found evidence from his study of the fossil record: he observed that fossils

of similar relative ages are more closely related than those of widely different relative ages. For

Darwin, the evolution of the species is a biological evolution which is based on the natural selection

phenomenon. According to him, the population composing a living specie is made up by individuals

apparently similar but in reality they are different on the biologicals